Study Shows Greek Hotels Overwhelmingly Dependent on Foreigners

The latest figures regarding the guests staying at Greek hotels reveal that the share of Greek citizens staying in Greek hotels has decreased significantly since the year 2010.

More specifically, the report, published by the Greek Chamber of Hotels’ Institute for Tourism Research and Forecasts, shows that only sixteen percent of total hotel guests in Greece were Greek citizens in 2018.

This compares to an average of twenty-six percent of Greek citizens who were staying as guests in Greek hotels eight years ago.

This figure is a result of both positive and negative factors. It reflects the deleterious effects of the recent financial crisis in the country as well as the explosion of Greece’s popularity among foreign tourists over the last several years.

Obviously, after nearly a decade of financial hardship for the Greek population, available income for domestic tourism has been drastically reduced.

Thousands of Greek citizens have chosen not to go on vacations, or if they did go, they preferred staying with friends and family to reduce the overall costs.

However, the huge increase in the number of foreign arrivals in Greece over the last few years has played a crucial role in this development as well.

Since 2013, Greece has broken one record after another in terms of tourist arrivals, with literally millions more foreign visitors coming to the country every year now compared to 2010.

This has also led Greek hotels to invest significant amounts of money into infrastructure improvements.

According to the Institute, more than €1.6 billion was spent in improvements to hotel infrastructure in Greece in just 2017 and 2018, reflecting an addition of approximately 20,000 more hotel rooms to the country’s available accommodations.